Tuesday, September 14, 2004

One fine morning

...in April, 1775, rural Massachusetts awoke to the sound of church bells. The people stepped out from their homes and scanned the horizon looking for the tell-tale column of smoke that meant a fire at a neighbor's farm, or the multiple columns that signaled Indian trouble, though it had been years since that had last happened. The sky was clear and the last mists of the spring morning were still in the trees. The bells continued to ring. As the rifles came down off the pegs and pouches and horns were filled, riders and runners spread the word that the Regulars were out. No fire, no Indians, but General Gage intended to make good on his promise to disarm the colonists.

Wives were kissed, then left behind in the doorways of fine clapboard homes or rude cabins with dirt floors. The paths and roads filled with hurrying men, and soon ones and twos became fives and tens stepping out toward their villages.

They gathered on the greens. They stood behind the captains they had elected from among their own and waited for what was to come. Fine coats or homespun - they had been pushed beyond the point of no return and would stand here, today, on their own, for their own, against the cream of the British Empire. An anonymous gunshot would soon turn the world upside down.

In September 2004, General Rather marched his army onto the virtual village green. He didn't see a soul and proudly fired off his volley. The Cb.s. column declared victory and broke ranks for a celebratory brew up.

Unfortunately for them, Buckhead, poster number 47 on Free Republic took a long look at the rolling smoke and decided to fire back. Then others flipped open laptops and fired up PC's and Macs. Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Allah, and Charles of LGF(and literally scores, if not hundreds, of others) hustled out onto the green. The Captain cleared for action and sailed down on the wind, the slow-match smoke drifting out the gunports to windward. Document experts. Typewriter aficionados. Lawyers. Screenwriters. Web Developers. Accountants. Radio hosts. Journalists. Authors. IT professionals. Mechanics. Pizza guys. Psychologists. People in need of good psychologists... and everyone in between. They stood up. We joined them on the green, just like the farmers and tradesmen who spilled out of the muddy lanes and fell in rank facing the redcoats. Three Rounds Brisk is a direct result of this situation.

When General Gage crushed the standing ranks at Lexington and Concord, the difference was measured in weight of firepower. Who was right or wrong didn't matter at the moment of decision - it was who brought the most mass to bear at the point. The British column's long walk back to Boston was a nightmare of sniping and ambush. Redcoats fell every foot of the way, so many that the English were compelled to abandon their baggage and fill their wagons with the wounded. The weapons on both sides were equal when measured man against man.

General Rather showed up on the virtual green prepared to fight the last war. He mistook his big black building, army of flunkies, and decades of power as having anything to do with what victory is measured by in a free market. Numbers don't matter when facts...when truth...decides the issue.

We don't have better guns. What we do have is ammunition - truth. Dan Rather left his balls on his desk, right next to his credibility. Hence smoke and noise in massive amounts, a pageant of precision but with little effect. Our ranks are firm. Of General Rather himself... he may not even make it off the green. I don't think that tossing off a handful of minions will come close to making good on this fraud.

We didn't suppress Cb.s.'s story. There have been no printing presses tossed in the street, no studios burned. There are no gulags filled with talking heads; there is no need. Being discredited is the worst thing that can ever happen to an MSM pundit.